


Giant Metal Kangaroos

by devilangelsol



Series: TFP One-Shots [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Family, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Funny, Gen, Humans & Autobots, Kinda Cracky, The Author Regrets Nothing, Unconventional Families, a bit sad in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 09:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20636801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilangelsol/pseuds/devilangelsol
Summary: "Human. Carrying. Chamber. We hold no semblance to this... organic marsupial!""It's a kangaroo pouch, Docbot. Justlook at it."Or, what to do when your tiny human friends are easily squishable yet determined to get in the middle of Giant Robot Altercations (TM).





	Giant Metal Kangaroos

It started, the way many things did, with Miko. Ratchet would later look back and grumble that, had it not been for her, he wouldn't have had to plan, build and program a whole new part and have it integrated and fitted into most of the Autobot's frames in the middle of a war, but, to be fair, the first couple times it happened weren't actually Miko's fault.  
  
  
They had simply forgotten that she was there.  
  
  
When Bulkhead had transformed around her that first time, instead of ending up in his hands or falling out, she had woken up squished against one of his seats with the glove compartment an inch from her face and the rearview mirror digging into her side, in a dark alcove faintly lit by a cold white light that filtered through the seams in the panels behind her.  
The seatbelt was the only thing that kept her from breaking her nose when the world tilted on its axis and started spinning; while the consequences of that were hardly her fault, she still felt obligated to put the floor mats through the wash (twice) and scrub Bulkhead's interior afterwards. Thankfully, the monster truck seemed more relieved than disgusted.

  
Wheeljack's hold was possibly even more cramped and stuffy than Bulkhead's, but his transformation made the seats flatten out and align themselves vertically one in front of the other, so that Miko was sandwitched between the two seats instead of forced into a fetal position. It did make it harder to free herself and remind the Wrecker of her presence, but at least she didn't have to worry about her face getting flattened. And she didn't even lose her breakfast this time! Score one for Miko.

  
Optimus had let her keep the Apex Armour after her first stunt with it, realizing that it would benefit a human a lot more than it would a Cybertronian, and considering that she had more experience with it that any of the others. While she did promise that she would only use it for self defence, that didn't stop her from sneaking along on patrols and diving headfirst into danger (as usual), only this time her signature accessory allowed her to be virtually indestructible, which in turn saved her guardians from suffering spark failure in the middle of a brawl when she was inevitably shot at, kicked, punched, kidnapped, buried alive, bridged to the Shadowzone, whatever. This, paired with the fact that she was rapidly getting better at controlling the Armour, had enabled her to convince Ultra Magnus to let her come on the less dangerous missions without having to be a stowaway; she could sneak around a lot easier than any of them, and with the armour tied to her chest and ready to activate at the flip of a switch, it made her an excellent scout.  
And then one day she burst out of Ultra Magnus's chestplates and slugged a highly surprised Predaking in the shnozz before the Armour even finished extending; it didn't do much damage, but it distracted him long enough for the commander to grab the Forge and dole a ringing hit to the dragon's head before he could crush his hand. After that incident, she was free to go with them on any mission.  
But that happened a lot later, after the Autobots had already installed the "kangaroo pouch" (as it came to be called).

  
("Human. Carrying. Chamber. We hold no semblance to this... organic marsupial!"  
  
"It's a kangaroo pouch, Docbot. Just _look at it_.")

Even if it technically did start with Miko, it was actually Raf who brought up the problem. He had hacked things in a number of interesting circumstances, but even he couldn't reprogram Decepticon tech contorted into a pretzel while Bumblebee, on the outside, got his aft kicked in every possible way by Insecticons. It also gave him an impressive amount of bruises. Ow.  
  
So when they finally returned, he presented his idea of building some sort of reinforced, padded box that the 'bots could unsubspace and attatch to their backs every time they needed to keep their human charges with them while in bipedal mode, and Ratchet, after griping and muttering and complaining about human fragility, lack of self-preservation and general pigheadedness, had capitulated and admitted that it would work better if this box were put under their chestplates, both for better protection for the human and maneuverability for the Bot.

  
In the end, all of them except Arcee had ended up installing it. (She had tried, but there was simply no way to fit Jack under her chassis. The one time she had transformed around him, he had ended up on her back desperately clinging to her winglets while dangling twenty feet off the ground. Miko has pictures.) Smokescreen took over "Jack babysitting duty", as he called it, so all was good.  
  
Optimus, after his upgrade, was so big that he could carry the three kids and Fowler _and_ June all at once in his hold with room to spare, a fact which had probably saved their lives when he'd had to catch them midair after they were blasted off the Nemesis. Ultra Magnus could probably carry all of them too, but there hadn't yet been a chance to test that hypothesis, as the commander refused to hold any human that wasn't Miko or Fowler--barring exceptional circumstances.  
  
The Wreckers in general used the "kangaroo pouch" with abandon. Bulkhead realized that carrying their mini-Wrecker around in the middle of a battle was much safer than just leaving her somewhere to get stepped on, Apex Armour or not; Wheeljack, on the other hand, had no qualms with taking every advantage this system offered: the girl took to saying "Miko: Eject" in monotone over their private commlink before springing out onto whichever shmuck happened on her trajectory, much to everyone's amusement and/or exasperation.

But in the end, there was one thing, above all, that made them keep their holds in subspace, even years after the end of the war and the rekindling of Cybertron, a secret that none of them ever spoke of but all of them knew.  
  
The memory of the sensation of a warm body, a heartbeat, against their spark.

**Author's Note:**

> I mean, it just makes sense...


End file.
